Desiderius

Common card · No. 375523

Desiderius, also known as Daufer or Dauferius (born c. 720 – died c. 786), was king of the Lombards in Northern Italy, ruling from 756 to 774. He was dux of Tuscia prior to ascending the throne upon the death of Aistulf. He consolidated his authority by suppressing a revolt mounted by Aistulf's deposed predecessor Ratchis and by subduing the recalcitrant southern duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. Pursuing, in the manner of his predecessors, an expansionist policy across the Italian Peninsula, Desiderius repeatedly came into conflict with the papacy, at one point installing his own claimant to the Holy See, an antipope whose appointment collapsed within a single day. The Frankish king Charlemagne married one of Desiderius's daughters in 770, only to repudiate her the following year; this rupture, compounded by Pope Hadrian I's appeal for Frankish intervention against continued Lombard encroachment on papal territory, precipitated Charlemagne's invasion of Italy in 773. After an eight-month...

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